Construction of Fort Peck Dam: 30 Amazing Vintage Photos Capture Everyday Life in Montana in 1936

Fort Peck Dam, dam on the Missouri River, northeastern Montana, U.S., one of the world’s largest earthfill dams. The dam is situated some 32 km (20 miles) southeast of Glasgow. A Public Works Administration project begun in 1933 and completed in 1940, it provides flood control, improved navigation, and hydroelectric power.

Fort Peck Dam is 76 metres (250.5 feet) high and 6,409 metres (21,026 feet) long. Its five turbines can generate 185,250 kilowatts of power. Fort Peck Lake, which the dam impounds, is the fifth largest constructed reservoir in the United States; it extends 216 km (134 miles). The entire Fort Peck system is contained within the Charles M. Russell National Wildlife Refuge.

In 1936, LIFE magazine assigned photographer Margaret Bourke-White to capture the multimillion dollar projects of the Columbia River Basin, as she recalled:

“A few weeks before the beginning, Harry Luce called me up to his office and assigned me to a wonderful story out in the Northwest. Luce was very active editorially in the early days of the magazine, and there was always that extra spark in the air. Harry’s idea was to photograph the enormous chain of dams in the Columbia River basin that was part of the New Deal program. I was to stop off at New Deal, a settlement near Billings, Montana, where I would photograph the construction of Fort Peck, the world’s largest earth-filled dam. Harry told me to watch out for something on a grand scale that might make a cover.

“‘Hurry back, Maggie,’ he said, and off I went. I had never seen a place quite like the town of New Deal, the construction site of Fort Peck Dam. It was a pinpoint in the long, lonely stretches of northern Montana so primitive and so wild that the whole ramshackle town seemed to carry the flavor of the boisterous Gold Rush days. It was stuffed to the seams with construction men, engineers, welders, quack doctors, barmaids, fancy ladies and, as one of my photographs illustrated, the only idle bedsprings in New Deal were the broken ones. People lived in trailers, huts, coops anything they could find and at night they hung over the Bar X bar.

“These were the days of LIFE’s youth, and things were very informal. I woke up each morning ready for any surprise the day might bring. I loved the swift pace of the LIFE assignments, the exhilaration of stepping over the threshold into a new land. Everything could be conquered. Nothing was too difficult. And if you had a stiff deadline to meet, all the better. You said yes to the challenge and shaped up the story accordingly, and found joy and a sense of accomplishment in so doing. The world was full of discoveries waiting to be made. I felt very fortunate that I had an outlet, such an exceptional outlet, perhaps the only one of this kind in the world at that time, through which I could share the things I saw and learned.”

Bourke-White’s photos, meanwhile, capture the vast scale of the audacious project and the far more intimate scope of the human capacity for finding joy or, at the very least, a kind of rough pleasure and fellowship wherever one can, whatever the odds.

Workers on Montana’s Fort Peck Dam blew off steam at night, 1936.

In Wheeler, near Fort Peck, Montana, Frank Breznik (left) was the law. He had previously been a traveling salesman in Atlantic City.

Wheeler, Montana, was one of the six frontier towns around Fort Peck.

The area’s latest hotspot was a town called New Deal.

The only idle bedsprings in New Deal are the broken ones.

Beneath a “No Beer Sold to Indians” sign, a woman tossed back a drink.

Life in the cowless cow towns was not cheap for its day.

Bar X, Montana, 1936.

The only alcohol that could be sold legally was beer by the glass, but at Ruby’s Place and others like it, liquor was also sold at a back bar.

One-fourth of the Missouri River would run through this steel “liner.”

Ed’s Place, Montana, 1936.

Ruby, second from the left, was the founder of the town of Wheeler—and its richest woman. She had come to Montana with experience in the Klondike.

Drinking at the bar Finis, Montana, 1936.

Mrs. Nelson washed New Deal, Montana, without the aid of running water.

One of the several frontier towns near the site of the Fort Peck Dam, Montana, 1936.

Men and women in one of the several frontier towns near the site of the Fort Peck Dam, Montana, 1936.

A bar in a town near the Fort Peck Dam, Montana, 1936.

A bar in one of the several frontier towns near the site of the Fort Peck Dam, Montana, 1936.

A bar in one of the several frontier towns near the site of the Fort Peck Dam, Montana, 1936.

Workers in one of the several frontier towns near the site of the Fort Peck Dam, Montana, 1936.

Wood was for sale in one of the several frontier towns near the site of the Fort Peck Dam, Montana, 1936.

A beauty shop near the site of the Fort Peck Dam, Montana, 1936.

One of the several frontier towns near the site of the Fort Peck Dam, Montana, 1936.

Men worked on the construction of Fort Peck Dam, Montana, 1936.

Construction of Fort Peck Dam, Montana, 1936.

Construction of Fort Peck Dam, Montana, 1936.

Construction of Fort Peck Dam, Montana, 1936.

Construction of Fort Peck Dam, Montana, 1936.

Construction of Fort Peck Dam, Montana, 1936.

Construction of Fort Peck Dam, Montana, 1936.

(Photos by Margaret Bourke-White / The LIFE Picture Collection)